Introduction: Overarching Women’s Empowerment

The discernible multi-dimensionality of the concepts of “empowerment” in general and “women’s empowerment” in particular has had inherently evolving historical and cultural connotations across several academic disciplines and varied geo-political domains of practical application. Beginning with a panoramic exercise in the conceptualization of the notion of women’s empowerment, this introductory essay goes into a critically thematic exposition of the main arguments and contentions of the contributions under the following headings—“Women’s Engagements and Encounters in History, Theory and Society” and “Violating Women: Empowerment Against Abuse, Assaults and Abandonment.”